These are the best read stories of 2023

(Off) campus and student life

1. Paternalism and unequal power relationships were the reasons for planetary scientist Daphne Stam to leave Aerospace Engineering. In Delta’s best read Campus article, she explains what preceded her resignation. ‘Decisions were taken about me all the time without my being consulted.’
2. Put ‘nude’ in the title and people will click on it. The Executive Board excludes Wolbodo from the OWee because of nude model article reached second place. It was about a playful action by Wolbodo, the ‘people’s association’, in which a workshop at the Ladies Intro for ladies on drawing live models used a nude male model on the grounds of the association’s artistic nature. But this was counterproductive.
3. The notification that the Municipality of Delft wanted to bring the OWee forward to the last week of the school holidays so that citizens would experience less disturbance caused an upheaval at the end of January. Apart from organisational inconvenience, the decision led to fewer new members joining student associations.
4. The End Fossil pressure group wants TU Delft to end partnerships with the fossil fuel industry. In pushing their demand, they occupied the Pulse academic building in May. Delta kept a well-read live blog and reported that the last protester left the building under police control at around half past twelve at night.
5. Useful and completely legal, Ellen Pruijn (TU Eindhoven), a bachelor’s student, thought up a trick to receive a basic grant. In her case about EUR 3,400. She had her student grant stopped for a couple of months only to resume it in September – but then when the basic grant returned. Read about it here (in Dutch).

Education

1. Artificial intelligence that helps students do their writing and programming assignments: the much talked about ChatGPT can do this. Are TU Delft students using it responsibly and how should teachers handle it?
2. The AthenaStudies company uses study groups on WhatsApp to promote their exam training and other products. Director of Education Ruud Balkenende (Industrial Design Engineering) calls it ‘morally reprehensible’ and it annoys TU Delft students. “I understand that AthenaStudies can help students prepare for exams, but they do this in such a pushy way.”
3. Minister Dijkgraaf’s bombshell. The Minister of Education announced that he intends to lower the binding recommendation on the continuation of studies to a 30 point maximum as of the 2025/2026 academic year. This should help ‘improve student well-being’. The Executive Board and the Student Council consider it a bad idea.
4. TU Delft plans to open a branch in Rotterdam which, over time, will be ‘a full campus with a substantial number of students’. The Rotterdam branch is part of the Contouren 2030 plan that combines the growth of TU Delft with less pressure on the TU Delft campus. Caspar Chorus (Dean of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering) and Han Derkx (former IT Director) are sent ahead as scouts. They will examine new degree programmes and their associated research and innovation activities.
5. The gains for PVV (Party for Freedom) and NSC (New Social Contract) in the House of Representatives elections could have consequences for higher education. Both parties want to stop internationalisation. The parties believe that international students will stay away of their own accord if they do not speak the language. In the run-up to the elections, NSC party leader Pieter Omtzigt called for Dutch to be the teaching medium at universities within three or four years.